"It may be that the primary factor in the appeal
of Merton's writings is his characteristic of penetrating
in clear language to truth. His works lead the reader
to a depth of self-understanding through a sharing of
his own inner discoveries"

In the late 1940s, in the aftermath of a terrible war and
as the world struggled to rebuild itself, confident in technology's
capacity to help in the task, a surprising thing happened:
a young monk's autobiography quickly became a bestseller.
Not only did it attract a wide reading audience, it awakened
vocations too: the Trappists as well as other religious
orders were overwhelmed by the number of postulants to the
monastic life who responded to his narrative. Thomas Merton
shared his story with the world in The Seven Storey Mountain
in 1948. From that time until his death in 1968, he continued
to write voluminously.

His writings on the life of the spirit, on prayer, contemplation
and inner life, solitude, and humanity's alienation from
and possible reconciliation with God, never failed to strike
a responsive chord in his diverse reading public. A monk's
austere and demanding existence was apparently fertile ground
that produced the fruits for which many hungered in the
midst of their plenty.

It may be that the primary factor in the appeal of Merton's
writings is his characteristic of penetrating in clear language
to truth. His works lead the reader to a depth of self-understanding
through a sharing of his own inner discoveries.

Merton's diligent studies of Christian saints, mystics,
and theologians was never expressed in his writings as a
sterile erudition. The reader always gets the impression
that "here is something alive, Merton is telling me something
real, he is sharing profound discoveries that have significance
for my life here in the 20th century." In the same way,
his eremitic calling did not separate him from his fellow
humans who toil in the world, but in fact united him with
them. The body of his published works chronicles a growing
contact with the ground of being, and he makes it clear
that the inner life of the spirit is the heritage of all
humankind.

Although there were many apparent obstacles to walking the
path he perceived as being his path-that of a contemplative
monk-all elements in his life added up to create in him
a fully realized human being. His European beginnings, his
wild youth and rebellious college days, his vocational self-doubt,
the growing awareness that the mere form of religious dogma
was insufficient for his spiritual unfolding, the struggles
with the Church censors over his writings, the prolonged
delay of being allowed to go into hermitage, the demands
placed upon a solitary monk by a world hungry for his words,
the physical deprivations he had to suffer as the price
of his hermitage, and, finally, the trip to the East and
meetings with monks and spiritual leaders from non-Christian
traditions-all contributed to the message he felt so naturally
compelled to share with his fellow sojourners in the modern
age.

He was a monk in a Christian religious order dating from
the Middle Ages, yet he was modern. He was a contemplative
who treasured solitude, yet he knew this world very well
and shared not only his "thoughts in solitude" but also
his observations on contemporary times. His purpose among
us was to report on the deepest meaning of human existence,
and he did it with wit and humor and always with love.

Given the depth of his writings and the response they evoked
in hundreds of thousands of his contemporaries, it should
serve as a useful purpose to look at some of the factors
that were involved in his awakening to the spiritual vocation.

Having arrived at a turning point of his life, Thomas Merton
made the decision to become a Trappist monk. This was not
done on a whim nor was it an instantaneous conversion. In
his autobiography, published when he was thirty-two, he
details some of the chance fortuitous events that prepared
him for his spiritual vocation. Merton's discovery of his
vocation involved a process of self-recollection that was
kindled by seemingly unimportant or irrelevant events. Some
people consider such ultimately poignant encounters to be
miracles, others consider them to be coincidence, while,
for most people, these potential turning points in life
go largely unnoticed or ignored. Merton himself came to
view these fortuitous events as the work of grace.

The first example of these fortunate events is related by
Merton as having happened even before his birth: his father
had been tempted to join an Antarctic exploring expedition
that passed through the town in France where he lived with
his wife, but he ended up not going. This "circumstance"
resulted in Thomas' birth in 1915. His mother was a devout
Quaker, yet was also open-minded in her child's religious
upbringing. She consciously tried to keep from molding him
according to her own ways. Merton's comment in his autobiography
on this is probably accurate: "My guess is that they thought,
if I were left to myself, I would grow up into a nice quiet
Deist of some sort and never be perverted by superstition."
An example of her singular approach to assure that her son
thought for himself is the way she used her own death as
a teaching for him. Thomas was six years old when she died,
and she would not allow the child to see her in the hospital
in the last few weeks. Instead, she wrote him a note telling
him about what was happening, which he read after her death.
He was thus left to contemplate this major event in his
life on his own and without the immediate emotional confusion
that might have accompanied a closer participation.